Chapter 8
“ W hat?” I stared at the blank screen as if stunned. “I didn’t do that, Nathan. I swear. Troy caught me when I had only typed in three digits. I gave him the phone because he wanted to return it to you.”
“That’s when he must have spoken to someone,” Nathan said darkly. “And since he didn’t want me to notice, he deleted the history. I bet if I asked, he would definitely blame it on you.”
Nausea rose in my throat. “He spoke to Isaac.” Nathan grimly jutted out his jaw.
“That would also explain why he was always so vehemently against Stanton: to draw attention away from himself. And he always had an explanation for everything.” He put the phone back in his pocket.
“Besides, he definitely sent me in the wrong direction to search for you on purpose.”
“So that he would find me before you.”
“Exactly.”
I looked at him questioningly. “But why did he say Kjertan was Rayk?”
“Maybe because he was afraid that I couldn’t believe Kjertan would do that.” Nathan rubbed his forehead in disbelief. “And I, the idiot, sent him away.”
“Why Troy?” I wanted to know, unable to believe it. “He was the one who was nice to me from the start. He was the only one who always gave me a bit of information.”
“Why do you think? Because he knew you wouldn’t survive, so he could basically tell you almost anything. That’s why. He bought your trust with information, so to speak. And he was only nice so that you would never suspect him if anything went wrong…” Nathan suddenly stopped.
There was a rattling and humming noise in the distance, like an ancient generator. “What is that?”
“A motorboat.”
My heart almost stopped. “Isaac?”
“No, wait…” He put his finger to his lips, listening while I stood there frozen in shock. “It’s moving away… Maybe Noah took our boat so I couldn’t get you off the island.”
“What?”
“He’s clever. He’ll think I asked you about the call history…” He pulled the file from under his belt and pressed it into my hand. “Come with me!”
“To where?” I stared at the tool, hoping he wouldn’t ask me to fight.
“We have to get out of here now,” Nathan said with dark determination. “If Noah did talk to Isaac, he definitely gave him our coordinates. Then it’s only a matter of hours before he shows up here.”
“Isaac is nearby?” His finely chiseled face flashed in my mind with his cold smile. I want you. I want you, body and soul: to possess, destroy, and kill .
Nathan unhooked the door and took my hand.
“Isaac knows that there is only one place in the world where I feel truly safe and where I always retreat to.” He looked at me.
“He is definitely near the bayous, waiting every day for a message from Noah…but he could search for a hundred years and never find us here. Only if Noah gave him the coordinates…”
I felt like I was going crazy. “How did he get the coordinates…” I stopped, remembering where they were, but Nathan shook his head as if he had read my thoughts.
“Noah never saw the coordinates on my back. I never changed in front of the others. I always made sure of that. And Isaac doesn’t know them by heart.
There are fourteen digits, and besides, he would never suspect a hiding place behind them, and the place isn’t directly on the island either.
No, he did it in an easier way by quickly switching on the GPS signal on the cell phone and using the compass. He had plenty of time.”
Fearful, I stepped out of the hut behind Nathan. The swamp suddenly seemed hostile, like a place of horror where vicious crimes were committed. Maybe I would be buried here just like Lea. I blinked several times, standing there as if in shock.
“Let’s check to see if the boat is still there,” Nathan said quietly, squeezing my fingers. “If it is gone, we’ll have to walk.”
If he had told me I had to lie down in a snake pit, I would have been less afraid. I thought of the coral snakes, the vulture turtles, the alligators, the giant spiders, and the cold, murky water.
I shuddered. Darkness now lay over the swamp like a gloomy canopy, and as we walked back along the bank under the cover of the bushes and night, we spoke not a word only exchanged glances. I prayed that the boat was still there, but my pleas went unheard.
The dock lay deserted, lonely, as if no one had been there in years. There was no light in the hut, but I spotted a shadow.
“Icarus,” I whispered. “He’s still here.”
Nathan’s lips thinned. “We’re going alone.”
“But we have nothing to eat or drink. We have no fresh clothes. We have nothing.” I stared numbly at our stilt house, which had sheltered us for so long. Somehow, even it seemed threatening now.
“Hey.” Nathan smiled encouragingly at me. “Today, we’ll try to get to our wild boar hut, and tomorrow, we’ll see if we can find other huts and supplies on land, okay?”
I merely nodded and tried to pull myself together since this was all my fault. If I hadn’t taken Nathan’s cell phone, Troy would never have had the opportunity to contact Isaac—because I was almost certain he had.
We hurried back and packed up clothes from the huts on the south end, which were so old and full of holes that we had previously rejected them.
Nathan made a makeshift bag out of an old cloth and I even found a bottle of water in our secret hiding place, in a hut where Nathan and I had often met.
When we stood on the bank, I was paralyzed.
Before us lay the floating forest that seemed so magical and peaceful during the day.
Now, the trees were in pitch blackness. Even though the fog had crept away over the Atchafalaya Basin and the half-moon light was pushing through the treetops, you couldn’t see more than ten yards ahead.
And ten yards wasn’t that far in a swamp where dangers lurked everywhere in the water.
“Come on, climb on my back!” Nathan ordered, kneeling.
Grateful, I did as he said. In his left hand, he held a long stick with which he now felt the bottom of the swamp in front of him.
“Because of vulture turtles.” Step by step, he struggled forward, and at some point, he was up to his hips in the black mud, so my pants were soaked with water at the bottom.
Frightened, I clung tighter to Nathan, my arms wrapped tightly around his neck.
I smelled his hair, his scent of salt and Louisiana, and tried to calm myself down, but my teeth were chattering.
Repeatedly, I shone the flashlight of the cell phone over the opaque water to see if I could spot a snake or something else in our immediate vicinity.
The wild boar hut as Nathan called it was not far from his sister’s grave.
I was certain that he would find it once we reached Lea’s resting place.
He said he could go to Lea blind and deaf.
We didn’t talk much, but I pressed my cheek against his head.
We wandered quietly, sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left, past dark trees, brushing against Spanish moss, and when we saw the orange-black writhing of a coral snake under the water’s surface not a yard away, Nathan paused and we stopped breathing.
I could have heard a speck of dust sink into the water.
Nathan grabbed my hand and squeezed it so tightly that I could barely suppress a scream, the snake, however, slithered away as if we weren’t there.
“That was close,” Nathan said, taking a deep breath.
“Didn’t you say they weren’t aggressive?” I teased because I was so relieved it was gone.
“They’re not. Usually.”
He kept walking, the phone showing 11:10 p.m. At some point, I forced Nathan to take a break, and we climbed up one of the huge tree stumps protruding from the water.
We kissed in the moonlight, and at that moment, I knew I would never let Nathan leave my life no matter what.
We had been connected since the summer at Rosewood Manor and we always would be.
“What happens afterward?” I asked, looking at him from the side. His dark hair fell to his shoulders and the moonlight outlined his profile bright and sharp, but his lips were soft.
“After what? After this?” He turned his head to me.
“Yes. What are you going to do afterward? Are you going to stay here or return to Coldville?”
Nathan stared through me for a moment as if lost in thought.
“I don’t know,” he finally said. “I haven’t thought about it.
My parents and Jacob are buried in Coldville and my sister is buried in the bayous.
My heart belongs to both places. I couldn’t be anywhere else for long without missing something, but Coldville is unfortunately not an option since the place is as sick as the people there.
” He paused briefly. “And you? Where will you go?”
“Wherever you are, of course.”
Nathan laughed tenderly. “Liar.”
“I’m not lying.”
“You’ll forget me as soon as you get back. And by the looks of it, that will be soon. The plan has failed. For good.”
“Are you serious?” That was shocking, but I didn’t know why.
Nathan glanced away. “It’s too dangerous, Will.”
“But.” My voice faded and a leaden heaviness filled my heart.
“You live for this plan. You said you owe it to the men and women of Coldville. You said you owed it to the dead!” I didn’t know why it made me angry that he wanted to give up now, maybe because I felt betrayed because everything had been for nothing.
Maybe because I didn’t want the man I loved to give up his only goal.
For my safety. But that was exactly what I had wanted.